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In a high-velocity demonstration that proves green and badass can coexist in the same vehicle, Mission Motors has set a new speed record for electric motorcycles.

Topping out at 161 mph, the Mission One motorcycle beat out 70 percent of the gasoline-burning bikes during a recent event at the Bonneville Speedway in Utah.

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When it comes to viruses, especially the serious kind that can make you bleed from your eye sockets and wipe out entire villages, most people naturally prefer to keep their distance. Not Nathan Wolfe. The 39-year-old epidemiologist has spent the past 10 years hunting them down in the jungles of Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. By collecting thousands of blood samples from wild animals and the people who live in close contact with them, Wolfe and his team have uncovered new viruses related to HIV and smallpox. He's even documented how these animal-borne killers leap to humans, with blood serving as a vector in transmitting viruses from slaughtered animals to hunters.

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Nintendo Wii devotees are likely already familiar with Johnny Chung Lee as the guy who appeared one day last year on YouTube with a mind-bender of a demo on how to use the Wii remote and sensor bar to do head tracking. By placing the Wii remote at the base of a TV and attaching the sensor bar to a pair of glasses (and in conjunction with a bit of custom software), Lee made the three-dimensional images on screen respond to his position in space, appearing to float off in front of the screen. As it turns out, Lee is more than just a guy with a knack for understanding the Wii remote; he's currently a graduate Ph.D. candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. And he's so impressed the gaming world with his developments that EA is bringing a Wii game to market this spring with a head tracking Easter egg.

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Playing with Google Earth is an immensely gratifying experience. You swoop in like a superhero and pan around as though you're hovering over your own house. Imagine if you were able to do all that in the other direction, out into space. This spring, Microsoft is poised to release the World Wide Telescope, which promises to do just that and more, on a scale of galactic proportions.

Microsoft has assembled an application of tremendous depth and breadth using data from the Hubble and land-based telescopes around the world.

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